The climate ambition of host countries and the stability of their regulatory frameworks are increasingly emerging as factors that could influence the price of internationally-traded carbon credits, as buyers and proponents seek to manage sovereign risks beyond the control of project execution, legal experts said this week during the Latin America Climate Summit (LACS) in Mexico.

Minor modifications - Verra has published VMR0018 methodology (Methane Avoidance Through Separation of Solids from Wastewater or Manure Treatment Systems v1.0) under its VCS programme, it announced Wednesday. The voluntary carbon standard said this constitutes a minor revision to its CDM methodology AMS-III.Y. (Methane avoidance through separation of solids from wastewater or manure treatment systems, v4.0), which applies to project activities that avoid or reduce methane production from anaerobic wastewater treatment systems and anaerobic manure management systems through the removal of volatile solids from the wastewater or manure slurry stream. Updates are being made to: allow the use of separated solids from animal manure as bedding material in barns; provide quantification procedures for projects using biofiltration systems to separate the solids; and require the use of newer VCS tools to establish baseline scenarios. AMS-III.Y. will be inactivated as a standalone methodology on July 1, 2027, Verra noted.

The EU should consider creating a 'Carbon Bank' to fund the scale-up of carbon removals (CDR) along with setting a separate deployment target for the nascent technology by 2040, new analysis suggests.

Off the grid – NatureGrid, a data management platform developed by Open Forest Protocol, was launched this week, with the aim of helping NbS projects organise field data, manage workflows, and consolidate data for reports. The platform was designed as a single source of truth for managing project documentation across regenerative agriculture, conservation, and ecosystem restoration projects alike. Open Forest Protocol added that the new platform is to make it easier to collect, validate, and monitor field data, as well as to share impact.

Gold Standard has opened a public consultation on a proposed green hydrogen carbon methodology that would quantify emission reductions from replacing fossil fuel-based hydrogen production with water electrolysis.

Up and away - UpEnergy has announced its project (VCS2676) in Tanzania has now become eligible for CORSIA Phase 1 under Verra's VM0050 methodology. The cookstove operator said on Linkedin that 142,504 credits have now been tagged as eligible for the international aviation offset scheme on the Verra registry, and they have already found a buyer. But further volumes are expected from the project this year and throughout the remainder of the CORSIA Phase 1, which runs from 2024-26.

A Global South-focused carbon crediting standard is partnering with forestry researchers to strengthen the environmental integrity of nature-based credits in carbon markets, the two sides announced on Wednesday.

On track – ACR and ART remain on track to transition their registries to the ICE GreenTrace platform as planned, representatives confirmed to Carbon Pulse this week. GreenTrace is a registry system used to manage carbon credits from issuance through to retirement. Under the previously announced schedule, participant onboarding was due to run from January-March, followed by a transition rehearsal in April and training sessions in May ahead of the June migration. The platform was also demoed in a recent online session by ACR.

The voluntary carbon market's (VCM) era of private sector registry-centric governance is over, according to an investment bank which claims  sovereign registries will assume the leading role in driving market changes now that Article 6 of the Paris Agreement is up and running.

The bottleneck in host countries approving projects for CORSIA, the international aviation offsetting scheme, is holding back nearly 600 million eligible credits to date, a ratings agency has found.

A US carbon removal company has secured investment from a Japanese trading firm to expand a facility in Arkansas, while separately signing a credit purchase agreement with a major shipping group, it announced Wednesday.

Buyers in the voluntary carbon market are paying more for biochar carbon credits when they are marketed with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) co‑benefits, according to a study.

A co-founder of a California-based carbon offsets developer and fintech startup has been sentenced to 14 years in a US prison after admitting to a years-long fraud scheme that prosecutors said caused $248 million in losses to lenders and investors.

Keep it separated - Isometric announced a draft module for book and claim for public consultation until July 1, underpinning the carbon standard’s expansion into Environmental Attribute Certificates (EACs). The new module establishes requirements for credits where the environmental attributes are decoupled from the physical product, including low-carbon materials, low-carbon energy, and sustainable fuels. With the module and the upcoming release of sector-specific protocols, Isometric is poised to become the first certifier to support CDR, superpollutant reduction, and EACs under one set of standards, on a single platform. The first EAC protocol will be released for low-carbon materials – Microsoft and Meta have both signed EAC-based agreements, and Isometric expects demand to expand. The module will ensure that every EAC issued by Isometric is additional, tied to verified physical production, and protected against double counting, in compliance with the ISO 22095-3 Chain of Custody Standard.